US Air Force Thunderbirds And Patrouille de France Fly Together Over Nevada

Two teams, together as one. That was the sight in the skies around Nellis AFB on today as the Patrouille de France arrived in Las Vegas for a visit with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds at their home base. The Thunderbirds sent up all six of their F-16 Fighting Falcons to escort the eight French Alpha Jets in, setting up a dramatic photo opportunity over the desert and mountains near Nellis.

The pilots and maintainers will spend two days in Las Vegas before flying to Colorado Springs, CO and Peterson AFB to fly over the US Air Force Academy. From there, they will travel to Langley AFB to take part in a VIP event which AirshowStuff will bring you coverage of on Friday. Several other events on their North American tour follow before they return to France in May.

This isn’t the first time that the USAF Thunderbirds have spent time with the Patrouille de France. The teams performed together at the Melbourne Air & Space Show in early April, and again one week later at Maxwell AFB in Alabama.

One Response

Chris O'Connor

April 15, 2017
We made a special trip to Mather Field (Sacramento, CA) today to see the French Air Force flight demonstration team, “Patrouille de France”, (PF). Their tour was planned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of USA’s entry into WWI. Their visit to Sacramento was their only performance in the western US, and seems to have been in honor of the 3 US soldiers that stopped the terrorist attack on the French train a few years ago.
The performance was very different than what we have witnessed from the Blue Angles, Thunderbirds, or Snow Birds, etc. The PF’s show featured over an hour of intricate 8 plane formations, and clever use of colored smoke (Tri Colour –blue white red, of course), and music.
All in all, their performance was a sincere celebration of precision formation flying, aerial ballet, and mutual respect.

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